


for all the wrong reasons

by amatchforyourmadness



Series: what two sides of a coin mean to one another [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: I clinically cannot write happy things, I'm on mobile so wait till I open my computer to add some real tags, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25384078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amatchforyourmadness/pseuds/amatchforyourmadness
Summary: It's some late hour of the night and the sky outside, dark and starless bleeds into a cloudy morning slowly, like blood diffusing in water, and he could not sleep. War is upon then, and death stalks hungry outside the walls for a prey. They don't know what Camlann will take of them, they only know it will take.
Relationships: Freya/Merlin (Merlin), Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: what two sides of a coin mean to one another [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745929
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	for all the wrong reasons

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know either don't ask me
> 
> Inspired by Richard Siken's Wishbone, because why not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He does what he has done best all these years: he saves him — feels his chest rise and fall with breath under his palm, the surprised choked out noises he lets out, marvels at the fact he pulled it off this one last time — and braces himself for the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ Do you want it? Do you want  
> anything I have? Will you throw  
> me to the ground like you mean  
> it, reach inside and wrestle it  
> out with your bare hands? If  
> you love me, Henry, you don’t  
> love me in a way I understand.  
> Do you know how it ends? Do  
> you feel lucky? Do you want to  
> go home now? ”
> 
> — Wishbone by Richard Siken

' _There's something about you_ ’, he said once, in wonder and confusion before shaking his head and looking away as if he has resolved he will never fathom him out fully despite his best efforts, as if he has tried (he hadn't).

His occasional affection cuts him more than swords can; always unprompted and unforeseen, a hand to his shoulder or a smile or a kind word, and he knows in some deep uncomfortable spot in the hollowness of his chest that destiny is not the only one holding him hostage. If there were no prophecies to tie him to a great kingdom or a greater king, if magic did not run in his veins like blood, no matter how he felt or how his days blended into different sorts of fearful apprehensions or the friends he had lost or pushed away, that turned his back on him slowly along a courtship and a crown to their heads, and the bad advice and the heartbreaking loneliness and the screams and the killing and the sweet ashy remains he sometimes inhales by accident of the people who have been burned, he would still not be able to leave him.

So he rues Arthur as much as he loves Arthur, tries to make sense of what is it like to be human in times where people demand him to be anything but, and he endures.

Because the affections are not as common as the insults, or the punching, or the injuries, or the whiplash his prince's changing humours leave in his wake, or the way he knows what is like to fall repeatedly of the same ladder: elevated to a valued friend, pushed down to servant who should keep his mouth shut. No matter how brightly he smiles or how kindly he treats him or the occasional question of if he is okay that he disguises under too many jokes to name, it never feels like a just compensation for the way he is beaten down and berated and made to feel insignificant when the man he loves that has hair like the sun and eyes like the sky turns into storms and rages and directs to him what he cannot direct at the world, because he let Merlin see him and that's the price to know even a sliver of who is Arthur, you must know him at his best and you must know him at his worst, and he has so much of his worst bottled away. No matter that he says now he didn't mean any of it, that he's the bravest man he's ever met, it just cuts him more that he could say the things he did without meaning them, only to see him wince. He feels like Achilles, struggling to survive, to take one step forward, and yet his disdain hits him time and time again in the one vulnerable spot he owned and he wants to resent him so much, so fervently, still he can't.

‘ _Just hold me_ ’ he says, and now he is dying and he has failed and everything drains out of him as if the thousand cuts have finally stricken him in an artery, and he's bleeding more than Arthur's wound and he's pulling him to the waters with a strength he didn't know he owned, eyesight clouded with tears, dragging his body into the lake until they're all neck deep in it, screaming for Freya or for anyone who would listen.

He cannot lose him.

This is where it all splits: his love, his death. He reaches with his magic at their destiny, grabs one of their ends tight, ignores Kilgharrah's words or the wrongness of the magic, feels something break when he pulls it to his whims. He does what he has done best all these years: he saves him — feels his chest rise and fall with breath under his palm, the surprised choked out noises he lets out, marvels at the fact he pulled it off this one last time — and braces himself for the worst.

Merlin drags him to the shore, heavy armour and senseless mumbling, questions about what happened about what did he do, so many and so fast he doesn't bother to listen. He won't stay, he's fallen of this ladder too many times, he won't wait for him to push him, won't let him do this again, twist his insides and his feelings into something warm like love and appreciation and the hope of being recognized by who he is only to take his dying words back, to snatch the scraps of reasons to keep going he can get on a place like this and with a life like his, sign his death warrant, build him a pyre, watch him burn side by side with Guinevere and the knights and his mentor and all the people who he knew all along would have him killed for all the acts of service he has done to them.

He goes to the edge of the lake, Arthur's fingers gripping him so tight they might as well be bruising his bones, like he won't let go, but Merlin nudges him gently towards the land and he stumbles forward, on his knees and his hands and coughs up the water in his lungs, retches like a dying man or a living man, who knows.

Maybe he won't take the words backs, maybe he won't burn him. Maybe he will do something equally as idiotic as say 'you saved my life' without knowing it is not the first time, ' _I owe you, I owe you everything_ ' and ' _ask me anything and it's yours_ ' and maybe this is where he should ask for the ban on magic to be lifted, maybe he should ask for him to unite Albion, or for a raise or to be left alone. Maybe he is to ask ' _kiss me?_ ' as he has wanted to for too long to be remembered, maybe he will ask ' _do you love me?'_ as he asked in his mind billions of times, maybe he will deny it and say there's no point for everything that's his eventually turns into Arthur's, like his life and his heart and his magic, or maybe he is to ask ' _did you find that one last tender place to sink your teeth in? what else will you need of me?_ '.

There are so many maybe's his head swims with them. There's so much Arthur owes him he could ask for the world and he would not have paid it all by the time he had gifted him it. There's so much he has done he doesn't ever want anything for, because he doesn't want that to be known. It tears at him, more than Mordred's blade had done to his flesh, he's sure of it.

He saved him for the wrong reasons, or maybe just in the wrong way.

Either way, Merlin is unwilling to follow him to land, to trail behind him through woods and hills back to stone houses they call home, and backs into the water, slow and deliberate. He just wants to rest. He did so much, he just wants to rest where no one will find him, where no urgencies will reach him, where no one will demand answers about the worse things he has ever done. The water near him shifts a little, and he opens his palm under them to feel the buzzing of energy, thinks of the magic under there, the place of healing he was never promised, the girl who kept the sword and that died on the shore and that would never deny him a thing, like he never denied her.

She too says she owes him, she too says she'll repay him one day for a debt that never existed, and he feels worse than usual when he calls on it, when he begs of her to please let him through. He's so tired. Surely no one can say he doesn't deserve some rest, look at what he's done, look at the blood spilled and his scarred skin and the pieces of him that he has murdered in the cover of the night so he could stand another day, surely he must be allowed _something_.

“Merlin?” Arthur asks, hoarse and lost, looking to the tree line and then to his side before turning, awkward and tired, towards him to see him some twenty steps or more away from him, with water to his shoulders, not understanding why he's so far when he knows, they all know he was born to be at his side, always. He shifts closer into the water, but his legs are unsure and Merlin just backs away another step, watches hurt and confusion wash over his eyes, question forms on his lips and a hand twitch to reach for him and he can almost let himself believe him he cares for him as much as the hopeful parts of his soul want him to. “ What…?” He begins to ask, but never finishes.

Things are just too grand and too impossible and too damn complicated, taxing and relentless and demanding in a way that has men begging to be let out, worse then any torture, and it was all that Merlin has ever known, something he was never to share less he wanted to be let out with a blade to his neck; and now that Arthur knows, he struggles with it, tries to make sense of years of secrets and untold truths and the senselessness of everything, and Merlin is supposed to explain it to him, to show him a sense he himself never found.

He feels Freya's hands, cold and small and gentle under the water, and he takes them, but still he can't look away from him. That golden bastard who he has given everything for.

“Merlin?!” He asks, catching up with the finality in his features, the tired hump of his shoulders. Something must shoot some adrenaline through him, because he stumbles to his feet and hurt bleeds into worry so deep he can only think of seconds ago where he thought Arthur would be taken from him under his nose, in his arms, and there's a pang of sympathy for something that consuming. Maybe, it's not that he expected Merlin to be at his side, not that he was to demand things explained or to take more of him in handfuls than he could stand to let be taken; maybe, he just wanted to keep him by his side for the simple reason of keeping him by his side, because he was his best friend and he cared somewhere in him that his father said could never be seen or shown.

Still, if he loves him, it's not in a way he can understand.

He's not wounded, not physically so, and he's not dead, still she tugs him down. Under Arthur's desperate gaze and the weight of his own thoughts, his head is submerged in water. The cries and calls and deaths and tolls and the horror of everything are left on the world above, and the girl with a curse he shared comfort and love with for barely a week on tunnels under the castle looks sadly at him, as if she can't recognise him, as if the world has weathered him so much no one really would, beaten to a bloody pulp. She cradles him in the soft sand, gentle words to her lips he cannot understand as exhaustion takes over him and he wills his magic to bleed out of him, to leave him alone or to force others to do so, to let him lay in the glittering world of Avalon under the eyes of the sidhe and the triple goddess and all those who have died, looking down at him as if he's something interesting, a dead man who still own a pulse and that inspires curious compassion, and lets them all bid him to rest, hoping he'll wake someone better than he's become.


End file.
